These roles exist at two different types of prospect companies: publishers and exchanges.

Therefore, we created 4 separate campaigns to speak to these audiences.

Prospect list segmentation for different audiences

Notice that we also created a campaign to automate the follow up on inbound website leads. Everything else is outbound.

2.

Targeted Campaigns for Each Buyer Type

Determine cadence;

Keep it short, professional, and fun;

Test multiple variations.

When we started building out our campaigns, Reply hadn’t launched direct calls yet.

So we initially set all our steps for email spaced 3-4 days apart.

We deliberately ended each campaign at 30 days with an “If your needs change” email, intended to close out the cycle while also keeping the door open to future communications.

We made sure to remind our prospects about opting out.

Not only is it the right thing to do, but most people appreciate the transparency and control over their inbox.

Targeted campaigns for different buyer personas

We achieved a greater than 50% open rate by targeting the right prospect with the right message.

We deliberately kept the messages short, professional, and fun.

Throughout the whole process, keep asking yourself “If I were the prospect, would I open this? Would I respond?” Ask your colleagues to do the same.

Short, professional & fun email copies

3.

Review Results at Least Weekly

By now, we’re climbing towards our cruising altitude and need to carefully monitor that we’re on the right track.

I recommend accessing your campaign dashboards at least weekly to observe the consistency and adequacy of your results.

Make as many tweaks and adjustments as necessary.

Weekly campaign analytics review

We found that our results quickly converged to a consistent rate of 6 out of every 100 people contacted resulting in a qualified opportunity.

This leads to the last tip.

4.

Connect to your CRM to Understand Downstream Success

Reply easily connected to our CRM of record (Salesforce Professional with API access) and made it easy for us to create and populate opportunities from the interested replies.

Most importantly, this connection allowed us to accurately measure the ultimate sales impact of our efforts.

For example, connecting the two systems gives us insight into which campaigns create the most opportunities, yield the highest close rates with the highest average sales price, and close within the shortest amount of time.

Cruising Altitude: In Conclusion

We knew we could remove our seatbelts and freely move about the cabin once our Reply and Salesforce metrics stabilized into a consistent range.

What this meant, is that each day began with a predictable amount of new opportunities.

Without the stress and time consumption of increasing the number of outbound deals my pipeline, I could focus on effectively moving those opportunities through the pipeline.

Essentially, I was my own Sales Development Rep.

By my estimate, I increased sales productivity around 5x by using Reply to eliminate redundant, time consuming tasks and reach more prospects, more frequently, than would ever be possibly manually.

While we’re always prepared for turbulence, our experience with Reply has made it a joy to fly the friendly skies.

Kevin Ascher

Kevin Ascher is the Founder & President of AcousticSelling, a company that makes sales teams more productive and effective by providing independent advice on the selection and activation of technologies that lead to lasting change.

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We’ve been using Reply at Sweet for over a month now and have achieved nearly a 60% open rate ourselves! A/B testing, tweaking campaign details, and paying attention to stats were crucial to us figuring out our secret sauce.